Yeah lets help the industry get selious. Throw in a random sex scene and love element involving two characters who hardly know each other. Make the ultimate badguy TEH INTERNET itself.
After the dreadful 'twists' of Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy Im really cautious with my excitement for this game. I had an incredible time with Fahrenheit till they totally spat in my face by taking the game into wtf territory. Either they thought it was a revolutionary idea or some exec looked at the game and said "This won't do, the plot is too solid and mature. Gamers want sex and violence and mugging". And the dogshit that is Fahrenheit was born.
I pray to god that Quantic Dreams stick to Heavy Rain's interesting concept all the way through this time.

And yet most studies I've seen say that the average age of gamers is around 30.

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2008/03/38-percent-of-g/
http://edugamesblog.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/esa-survey-malefemale-gamer-ratio-is-6040-average-age-is-35/

Just most because games have fantastical/imaginative stories doesn't mean that they're ZOMG 4 KIDZ. Transcending reality doesn't mean that their stories are inferior to whatever this elitist asshole came up with.

@danthuman

No, you were not!


He's got a point to bad he doesn't make games himself.

fuckin' add comment buttom



oh well, HR is certainly lookin amazing, just as unique as any Team ICO game

@ John Johnson

If the game tells you, it's pretty obvious. When it's in the plotline, you know he's evil, that's the basis of the game. I'm speaking in game terms here, not reality.

I like to try and keep the two separate whenever possible.

I like the way Cage thinks. I really hope Heavy Rain is a great game.

Patrick to David Cage: "Make a real game then, that does so, or shut up"

Sorry, heavy rain is awful from what I have seen of it, everything is clunky from the amount I have played and seen, seriously in the eurogamer demo, you could press one button and get the same outcome of those that used every button prompt.

A QTE is not a proper game.

You know what? Sometimes I want Dr. Wily. Sometimes I want to rip a monster in half with a gun-mounted chainsaw. Sometimes I want the 50-foot-tall Earth Defense Force aliens.

Maybe I'm just sniffing an undertone of "games as art" here, but this guy is coming off as a douche.

The big problem with thinking we want games to grow up is, you never really stop liking boobs and explosions. And some of us have to mull over enough tough questions just in day-to-day life. What's wrong with simple escapism? I'd say more, but I think Char Aznable said it best.

"For instance, when Aeris died a ton of players were shocked and saddened, but then we're reminded of a talking cat sitting on a mog, or a bunch of people who look as ridiculous as Cloud or Barrett, which detatches us from this fascinating chocobo world. Themes notwithstanding, the setting is not relatable, not reasonable."

This is bullshit. It's perfectly relatable and resonable because it all matches the confines of that fantasy world. The only reason you think it's detached is because you're trying to confine it within your own idea of what the world should be, rather than allow yourself to accept it.

The nuke scene in CoD4 was terrible. I felt absolutely nothing for that character aside from "whoops, I won't be him now." It had no impact because you see zero impact aside from a big explosion. It's just another setpiece in a big action movie.

Kefkaesque, again, you really don't have to call someone an elitist asshole just because you perceived that he was insulting your delicately crafted D&D games or your nostalgia-fueled eterna-wank over the brilliant nuances of Final Fantasy VI

That you're so insecure speaks more to the fact that we as gamers know in our heart of hearts that our beloved industry doesn't respect our intellect enough to even attempt to consistently create stories with any kind of sophistication or human incisiveness. I know you claim to have found a few diamonds in the rough as far as "fantastical/imaginative" games go (which is so ludicrously irrelevant that it's what made me think you have some underlying issues here in the first place), but to argue with any volition that that is the rule rather than the exception is to insult both your and my intelligence more than the most visceral, thick-skulled Gears of War cutscene ever could.

To the rest of you: maybe I'm at fault here for assuming that every Destructoid reader implicitly agrees with Anthony Burch (a premise that should have been disproved to me immediately with the advent of the HAWPcast), but what exactly is being argued in dismissing this guy? He is not some bullyish representation of the entire video game complex like the Bobby Kotick of creativity. He is the voice outside of the normal spectrum, saying that with very few exceptions, games aren't in the business of maturity and depth. And he's right.

So, Char Aznable, to say that sometimes you want to turn your brain off and indulge in the guttural, cartoonish tropes of video games - that's great, but it's ridiculous to portray doing so as an occasional circumstance. What you're describing is what video games are and it's people like David Cage that are the ones on the fringe for desiring something more. Don't dare act as if he's somehow persecuting you for enjoying the ninety-nine games out of any given hundred that exist to entertain first and provoke thought dead last.

@Carl Sagan

Bladerunner, Neuromancer, Hardboiled, Ghost in the Shell, I can't think of any more off the top of my head, all I was trying say is that it is a boring route to go when trying to define a character. (origami is precise, murder is precise, control, giving life to an intimate object, emulating life, etc)

No, I picked Final Fantasy VI as my example of fantasy games being inferior.

I picked Gears of War as my example of the quintessential "video game" game, full of sound and fury, et cetera, cough.

The same way you picked it as your example of two words that are capitalized in my post, allowing you to skim for a moment before isolating that one instance in a way that lets you refute what was not my point while deftly avoiding addressing all the things what were.

@EggmaniMN

Obviously I disagree. Having played a level or two with the character I started to get used to him and his mates, the way people do with Gordon Freeman. "You see zero impact"? Do you forget the big crash or the entire lead up? The part where you crawl out of a wreckage as shattered as you were, looking up at that horrific sight and then toppling over having bled out or from radiation poisoning or whatever.

Aeris' death, on the other hand, seen coming from a mile away (goes without saying, I know) and almost completely forgotten about wrt the plot not ten minutes later. It would have been more realistic - more shocking - if you were to take out all the mogs and chocobos and gun arms and instead have everyone wearing those hats that have unbrellas on them. More realistic.

In other words, it was not a world that ressembled our own. It was not logically consistant with our world, it was not relatable in a reasonable, non-imaginative way. I needed to engage my imagination in order to accept the world, not any rationality or reasoning (if you'd try to accept the ff7 world accoring to reason, you'd pop). Im not saying I wasn't immersed in the game or the world. I was. You seem to have gotten the wrong impression, mate.

And because I imagine it coming up, I'm not slamming the use of imagination when it comes to games. Definitely not. I love it's use more than almost anything. But I'm sick that we've gotten to a point - a perfectly acceptable point unortunately - that imagination can be used as a get out of jail free card. (And I love hacking and slashing and DMC as much as the next guy, but if we don't challange the status quo of the medium, it won't ever change (and I got sick of DMC after the third game).)

@Kefkaesque

I never said fantasy setting are inferior. You probably couldn't read me right because your dick is too small. Prick. Anybody can post this site with stupid insults, see? Why don't you try showing other people some respect. I mean, fucking respect.

While I love the concept, the one thing that scares me about this game is the dialogue. Some of the trailers I've seen have featured dialogue that just seems a little...off (the "You go, girl!" bit comes to mind, as well), and for a game that will focus so heavily on story, it really needs to be water-tight. I hope this is something that will be worked out before the game's eventual release, but there is always the fear that parts may be lost in translation.

Eh, the SRS BSNS gamers who want their dark stories that take place in contemporary society with no elements of fantasy or imagination can have their games. I'm not going to judge them because they choose to play something I would find extremely boring. I mean I seriously got to hand it to these gamers who for some strange reason, dislike imagination in their games. I mean I thought most gamers enjoyed imagination, but I guess I was wrong. Makes me wonder what they were doing with their childhood. Ah well, I guess to them, real life>fantasy even in video games, the ultimate fantasy provider. ;P

Me, I'll stick with my fantasy games. As long as the characters are believable and ones I can relate to on an honest level, that's all I need. I already have to deal with news about rape, murder, poverty, tragedy, and war on a daily basis, if I had to put up with that in every single video game as well, I'd probably go insane.

@SansJason

Thank you, for phrasing those nagging ideas in my head I couldn't quite formulate!
Also lol

@SansJason

I am not a native english speaker, thank you for the enemy status.

Kefkaesque, I agree that I was too derisive of you initially, and I do apologize for insulting you, despite strongly disagreeing with both your opinions and how you relate them.

Byronic Man, don't tell anyone, but I have a crush on you.

It's a self-delusion that the game industry "makes video games for kids." The game industry makes games for 20-30 year olds.

Not that I'm necessarily disagreeing with wanting that shift, but I think it's pretty delusional to think that games like Bayonetta are targetting teenagers. I mean, sure, yeah, some of them will get it and certainly it's attractive to them. But if you look at gaming ages, you'll see the customer base is well over the teens.

after i played ICO and SOTC i simply fell in love with the idea of games being used as an artistic medium


the level of interactivity they offer creates a level of immersion that simply cannot be emulated in other means, its a shame such tool is so underused

kefkaesque

to put it in words you might understand



its easier to relate the player to a character from this dimension/time period, that doesnt means fantasy scenarios should be scrapped, its all part of the vision of the writer/director/developer, but the fact its easier to relate the player to realistic scenarios remains, since we perfectly know how reality works

This is me rolling my eyes at the Half-Life, Ico, and Shadow of the Colossus references that were inevitable here. Hey, have you checked out that Braid game?

I only took issue with the fact that this guy is mocking the industry at large when his company has put out two games in 10 years. Release your transcendent masterpiece first, then you can talk shit on everyone else.